Smartwatches and fitness bands are infiltrating our wrist space.
At CES earlier this year, we couldn’t walk two steps without bumping into a wearable tech stand, and while there’s already a whole array of step-counting, heart rate-monitoring, fitness bands to choose from, Acticheck’s Assure wants to stand out from the crowd.
Dubbed as the world’s first continuously monitoring personal alarm system, the Assure doesn’t concern itself with buzzing when your profile picture’s been liked on Facebook, or telling you how many steps you’ve taken since you got off the bus.
Instead, it’s designed to monitor your wellbeing, and alert emergency contacts if it detects that things have taken a turn for the worse.
Linked to a smartphone (or accompanying home base station), the Assure is able to constantly monitor your location via GPS, while built-in sensors keep track of various biometric measurements, including temperature and movement readings.
Checks are run every 15 minutes, and if anything is out of the normal range (including high impact falls), it triggers an alert. A connected phone gives users an opportunity to dismiss the emergency notification if all is well, but if that is left unchecked, then the emergency contacts are automatically alerted in order, until one person responds.
The band can also manually broadcast an emergency at the push of a button, and it’s fully waterproof with a two-year battery life, freeing users from the hassle of daily charging.
The band should come in handy for the elderly, or workers/sporty types who are often on their own in isolated places. If you knocked yourself out snowboarding down the steep face of a glacier for example, then the Assure could notify contacts with your location. As long as there’s sufficient mobile coverage in the area of course. Best not to go too far out into the sticks then but it should be functional here in SA. The folks at Acticheck have said that “We will be gaining CE approval for Europe and South Africa and will be working towards approval for sale in the US and Canada”.
If you fancy backing the Assure then head on over to Kickstarter and back one now from the special early bird price of £100 (R1,800). Acticheck will use the £25,000 (around R440,000) goal to fund an app to for the Assure, so that it can hit shelves and be on wrists in July late this year.
Source: Kickstarter
